Artissima (Artissima Internazionale d’Arte Contemporanea di Torino) last week returned to the Oval Lingotto Fiere in Turin’s industrial area (originally built for the 2006 Winter Olympics speed skating competition) with 176 participating galleries. In this city, contemporary art has long set the pace for Italian cultural innovation. Italy’s first contemporary art museum, Castello di Rivoli, was established here in 1984, 10 years before Artissima was launched. The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo opened almost at the same time as the fair’s debut, and the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GAM) was already beginning to flourish. Artissima was born as a marketplace platform, but also complements these emerging institutions.
Luigi Fassi, who is hosting the fair for the fourth year in a row, nonetheless introduces himself as “a hundred percent curator.” He first started working with Artissima by overseeing the Now Future segment. Since about 2007, Artissima has only had curators as its directors – “which is very telling of the DNA and spirit of the show. I’m trying to strengthen that curatorial identity,” Fassi told the Observer . He noted that more than 50 curators contributed to various parts of the fair and to off-site projects.
“Obviously, it’s 100 percent It has to be, always will be. But I think it’s also an interpretation of the nature of the market. I think you can help the participating galleries by introducing them to curators, institutions… It’s important that we continue to serve as a platform.” As for those fair goals, Fathy noted, “We try to be inclusive of middle-class collectors. , the Italian and international bourgeoisie. In Italy, collecting culture has always been a middle-class game. We all grew up in Italy with our grandparents and parents having paintings on the walls, so it’s not necessarily that way everywhere, not even in Europe, that’s our culture.”
While this distinctly Italian sensibility sets the backdrop for the show, Fasci noted that most of the participating galleries are not Italian. “It’s like 60% international fairs and 40% Italian fairs. There are not many regional fairs where local players are a minority.” The fair is public but does not receive any public funding; it belongs to the Turin Museum Foundation along with the main museum institutions. “I don’t have to respond to CEO requests for me to make more money. That’s my advantage. I can reinvest any money I make into the fair to support the gallery. If you don’t have to make money for shareholders, you think differently.”
As a curator, Fathy has high expectations for the booth presentation. “It’s better to do one less job than one more job,” he said. There are about 30 thematic booths, which he noted “give you an idea of how much trust the gallery has in the artist, because obviously it’s more of a risk to have just one artist coming, but it’s great for collectors. Collectors really like that because they can really delve into the artist’s practice.” The fair also features conversational events, including one from London gallery Alice Amati, which brings together the Romanian-born, Vienna-based painter Paul Robas (whose works sold during the preview days from 3,000 € to €6,000), and the Italian sculptor Ilaria Vinci of Zurich, whose celestial-style birthday cake sculptures range from €2,500 to €4,000, attracted particular attention. Making her second appearance at the show after graduating from the New Works section, Amati noted, “I’m originally Italian, so it makes sense to connect with the scene here,” and described herself as being in the “testing phase” of the show, with plans to return not only to Artissima, but also to NADA Miami in December.
Biasutti & Biasutti is a representative of Turin, founded in 2000 by Attilio Biasutti with his son Giuseppe and daughter Paola. The gallery presents a project on the Arte Povera movement, with four artists in contact with nature: Piero Gilardi (€150,000-450,000), Giovanni Anselmo (€10,000-400,000), Giulio Paolini Paolini (€10,000-€70,000) and Mario Merz (€40,000-€400,000), including his iconic Fibonacci sequence. Paolo Biasutti noted that there were “good vibes” during Turin Art Week, but that “Turin is a city full of magic”, adding that “with all the current difficulties we have to overcome them and [the fair] It is a way to overcome difficulties. The gallery also participates in Bologna’s Arte Fiera, although Biasotti admits it attracts a more domestic audience.
More international in scope is the Thomas Dane Gallery, which also holds annual exhibitions at Frieze and Art Basel. Senior director Federica Sheehan told the Observer that the gallery participated in Artissima from 2010 to 2012 and opened a branch in Naples in 2018 before returning in 2023. “We have noticed an increase in foreign visitors,” she said of this edition of Artissima. The nearby Pinacoteca Agnelli exhibits the work of one of the gallery’s artists, Paul Pfeiffer, who collaborated with Artissima on a project realized on the Pista 500 billboard. Pfeiffer’s work in the booth featured a deconstructed body of Justin Bieber, which became “the most photographed work in the booth…maybe in the show,” Sheehan said, noting that its focus was “on both religious and popular media.” Nonetheless, Luigi Ghirri’s photography (priced at €11,000) was the first to be sold on preview day, and sales were strong.
The newly shortlisted exhibition area brings together 12 emerging international galleries that have been open for less than five years, including PıLEVNELı Gallery, founded by Murat Pilevneli in 2017 in Istanbul’s Dolapdere district, which exhibited the work of Bora Akıncıtürk for the first time (priced at €6,000 to €10,000). Pilevnelli admits that he is new to Turin, but observes, “In the end, all the fairs are very similar. The only change is that some are more local and some are more international.” He describes Turin as having a “local” side, but is happy to meet Turkish collectors. At the same time, Akıncıtürk also played with the concept of fairs themselves, noting that “conceptually, fairs today are often this dystopian eco-hypercapitalism.” [thing]”. His work is based on images found online, using a “pop art, slightly glam color” approach—in this case, depicting a pair of sparkling second-hand Margiela boots from Vinted and a lesbian porn star-turned-activist. “I think [the work] Touching the market as it relates specifically to late-stage capitalism,” he added.
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